Amazon's New HQ?

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tmart
Rice Park
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Re: Amazon's New HQ?

Postby tmart » January 18th, 2018, 12:53 pm

Do we think Target was a factor one way or another here? I think most would have had us in the top 20 finalists, unless climate was the key factor.
No. I think if anything, having an existing concentration of retail talent would have worked in our favor, given that Amazon is willing and able to siphon talent.
I really don't think it came down to anything besides the tax breaks (except for maybe NYC? Don't remember what they offered), so I'm not too heartbroken to not have Minneapolis/St. Paul on the list.

It's a little relieving that we didn't lose out based on inadequate mass transit, though.
My guess is that top-tier cities probably got in on their merits--if you're serious about locating in New York, it's not because of a tax break--whereas mid-tier cities like ours had to fight a bit more on the handouts to get noticed.
If Amazon was willing to consider the suburbs of D.C. (NoVa and Maryland) as finalists, I don't see how any site we would have offered would have been worse as far as not being "urban" enough.
Well, the DC metro subway does extend substantially into both of those suburban areas, so I don't think that's a fair comparison. But I do think it's telling that NoVa, Maryland, and DC all made the cut with separate bids. Pretty blatantly trying to set off a bidding war between those three, IMO.

I think there's a decent chance that Amazon mostly had a shortlist predetermined before the whole thing started, and just wants the façade of proposals as a cover to get the cities on that shortlist to bid against each other. I would've welcomed the HQ in MSP and I think we would have been a good fit, but I'm glad we didn't get sucked into that.

phop
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Re: Amazon's New HQ?

Postby phop » January 18th, 2018, 1:22 pm

Pretty clear that degree of subservience to the company is a high priority, if not #1 for Amazon in this search.

Didier
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Re: Amazon's New HQ?

Postby Didier » January 18th, 2018, 3:05 pm

I'm not surprised or disappointed that we didn't make the short list, but I was hoping they might go somewhere like Detroit or St. Louis where it could have had a huge impact in revitalizing an older city.

Anondson
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Re: Amazon's New HQ?

Postby Anondson » January 18th, 2018, 5:15 pm

@mspbjhalter tweeted that MSP submitted 18 sites. What were our metro boosters thinking?! 🤦‍♂️

Chef
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Re: Amazon's New HQ?

Postby Chef » January 18th, 2018, 5:33 pm


No. I think if anything, having an existing concentration of retail talent would have worked in our favor, given that Amazon is willing and able to siphon talent.
It may have worked in the other direction. Amazon is notorious in Seattle for being a high turnover employer that burns people out. Maybe they didn't want to run the risk of losing their talent to competitors.

codyzwief
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Re: Amazon's New HQ?

Postby codyzwief » January 19th, 2018, 6:15 am

I don't think Target or Best Buy was a factor one way or another. Looking at jobs available here, most are in AWS. Amazon apparently isn't interested in siphoning retail talent, but instead tech talent.

QuietBlue
Target Field
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Re: Amazon's New HQ?

Postby QuietBlue » January 19th, 2018, 9:11 am

A number of the cities/states they're considering have major retailers headquartered within them, so yeah, I don't think it was a factor either.

John21
Rice Park
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Re: Amazon's New HQ?

Postby John21 » January 19th, 2018, 9:58 am

It's almost like all of their requirements are flexible for the right price, and this is just a ploy to extract as much subsidy as possible.
This. It looks like they're going to the DC area and are letting local gov'ts there compete for the largest corporate welfare handouts. It's gross and not at all surprising.

amiller92
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Re: Amazon's New HQ?

Postby amiller92 » January 19th, 2018, 1:47 pm

It was likely taxes first and foremost
Huh? They've got a bunch of high-tax places on the list of finalists, including Boston, Chicago, NYC and DC.

Nearly all (or all?) of the cities on the list are a lot bigger than us, though, and many of them are already tech hotbeds.

amiller92
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Re: Amazon's New HQ?

Postby amiller92 » January 19th, 2018, 1:48 pm

If Amazon was willing to consider the suburbs of D.C. (NoVa and Maryland) as finalists, I don't see how any site we would have offered would have been worse as far as not being "urban" enough.
NoVa is already a tech hotbed and depending on exactly where, parts of both of those suburban areas are served by the Metro. And near the Metro stops, those place can be fairly urban too.

SkyScraperKid

Re: Amazon's New HQ?

Postby SkyScraperKid » January 22nd, 2018, 8:32 pm

@mspbjhalter tweeted that MSP submitted 18 sites. What were our metro boosters thinking?! 🤦‍♂️
...they wanted to come off as desperate,clingy, and versatile? They should have mailed it day before the deadline on the back of an Arby's Napkin and given only 1 site.. I'm sure they would have been more impressed.

Bob Stinson's Ghost
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Re: Amazon's New HQ?

Postby Bob Stinson's Ghost » January 22nd, 2018, 9:25 pm

What's really irritating is that the short list came out to be the same short list it would have been if Amazon developed it internally.

But they sure got a lot of free publicity using the process they did.

nate
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Re: Amazon's New HQ?

Postby nate » January 23rd, 2018, 9:14 am

@mspbjhalter tweeted that MSP submitted 18 sites. What were our metro boosters thinking?! 🤦‍♂️
...they wanted to come off as desperate,clingy, and versatile? They should have mailed it day before the deadline on the back of an Arby's Napkin and given only 1 site.. I'm sure they would have been more impressed.
I think it more likely came across as fractured and disorganized. We have 18 sites that want a piece of the pie, but we didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings by organizing around a single one, so here's a list of all of them! Combined with the tiny public money offering, I am sure our offer provoked a fit of laughter and a heavy thud as it hit the trash can.

kirby96
Union Depot
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Re: Amazon's New HQ?

Postby kirby96 » January 23rd, 2018, 10:50 am

@mspbjhalter tweeted that MSP submitted 18 sites. What were our metro boosters thinking?! 🤦‍♂️
...they wanted to come off as desperate,clingy, and versatile? They should have mailed it day before the deadline on the back of an Arby's Napkin and given only 1 site.. I'm sure they would have been more impressed.
I think it more likely came across as fractured and disorganized. We have 18 sites that want a piece of the pie, but we didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings by organizing around a single one, so here's a list of all of them! Combined with the tiny public money offering, I am sure our offer provoked a fit of laughter and a heavy thud as it hit the trash can.
Well, on the flip side of that, why bother hurting anyone's feelings if you aren't really serious anyhow?

Tcmetro
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Re: Amazon's New HQ?

Postby Tcmetro » January 23rd, 2018, 1:13 pm

FWIW, Chicago submitted 8 sites, which pretty much consisted of any large block of undeveloped land in the downtown area. And also another 3 suburban sites, which I imagine have no actual chance of being selected.

tmart
Rice Park
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Re: Amazon's New HQ?

Postby tmart » January 24th, 2018, 12:16 pm

I really doubt the number of sites was the issue with our proposal. If Amazon were seriously interested in coming to MN they wouldn't mind sifting through a few sites to find the right one, especially if the sites were well-chosen to reflect a broad variety of choices between urban-vs-suburban, greenfield-vs-brownfield, Minneapolis-vs-St. Paul, etc.

The reasons we didn't get considered are twofold:
1. We didn't offer billions of dollars in free money.
2. We weren't on the shortlist they probably already had before soliciting proposals.

talindsay
Wells Fargo Center
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Re: Amazon's New HQ?

Postby talindsay » January 29th, 2018, 3:31 pm

@mspbjhalter tweeted that MSP submitted 18 sites. What were our metro boosters thinking?! 🤦‍♂️
Side note, mspbjhalter is an incredibly funny user id, sounds very Lutheran.

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MN Fats
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Re: Amazon's New HQ?

Postby MN Fats » March 19th, 2018, 3:47 pm


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VacantLuxuries
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Re: Amazon's New HQ?

Postby VacantLuxuries » March 19th, 2018, 4:29 pm

They told Duluth and Rochester proposals not to bother, but they let every 2nd ring suburb throw their vacant farmland into the ring. FFS.

tmart
Rice Park
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Re: Amazon's New HQ?

Postby tmart » March 19th, 2018, 8:47 pm

Hahaha, Bloomington's pitch is amazing. We'll extend the light rail...but only for one stop, just north of IKEA. And it'll switch to a monorail! Monorail, monorail, monorail!

I really don't buy the "we pitched too many sites" critique though, or understand why it comes up so often. If Amazon wanted to come here, they would just pick their favorite and go from there. Notice how 3 different DC bids made the cut. They had their reasons for not coming and I'm going to guess they had very little to do with real estate or municipal governments.


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